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Cornell's Peter Debye, 68, Nobel Prize-winning chemist and physicist, author of the Debye theory of the specific heat of solids. Born in The Netherlands, Debye succeeded Einstein as professor of theoretical physics at the University of Zurich, served as director of Berlin's Max Planck Institute until the Nazis drove him out ("Stay at home and occupy yourself by writing a book," they told him), in 1940 finally made his way to Cornell. There, perpetually wreathed in cigar smoke, he pioneered in high polymer research, taught Cornellmen their chemistry, and each year managed to make them like it.
Cornell's gruff Alexander M. Drummond, 67, who in 32 years as professor of speech and drama, has turned Cornell's drama department into one of the best in the country. Like the football coach he started out to be, "the Boss" railed and ranted through hundreds of rehearsals ("May I remind the cast that the audience usually likes to hear the lines that the author has taken the trouble to write?"), badgered and bludgeoned dozens of gawky students into becoming well-known actors and writers. Among them: Sidney Kingsley, Franchot Tone, William Prince, Dorothy Sarnoff, and Dan Duryea ("Strangely enough, he advised me not to become an actor").
Wellesley's cello-playing Thomas Hayes Procter, 66, minister of the Christian Church, professor of philosophy, and perennial favorite of the campus. In class, staring abstractedly into space or twiddling with his vest "twiddle button," "Mr. Plato" led a whole generation of girls through the intricacies of Greek thought (At a girls' college, "you don't have to be good; you just have to be a man"), became their father confessor, often officiated at their weddings—a kindly, rumpled man, who never found time to write a book because he was so "passionately excited by teaching."